


The Favor

by secretsofthesky



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Disabled Character, F/M, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, ex-con Jughead Jones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 07:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23967892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsofthesky/pseuds/secretsofthesky
Summary: As a favor to a friend, Betty Cooper drives halfway across the country to bring Jughead, who has just been released from prison, home.
Relationships: Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 12
Kudos: 98





	The Favor

* * *

Betty Cooper had never met Forsythe Pendelton Jones III - but from the stories she’d heard, she felt as though she knew him more than she knew herself. 

Though despite that, she still paced back and forth nervously, knuckles white from gripping her keys so tight as she waited outside the large metal gates, wondering if the person who soon exited them would match the image she’d put together in her head over the past eight months.

When she’d begun volunteering at the VA medical center in her city in an effort to gain hands-on experience while working her way through nursing school - she never expected it would have led her here. 

When people thought about long term care facilities, they thought of the elderly, people who could no longer care for themselves on their own, and that had been her thought going in as well - prepared to be caring for veterans old enough to be her grandparents. 

So when she walked in that first day and saw a man with flaming hair who didn’t look much older than she was sitting wheelchair-bound in a corner, staring blankly out the window - she had been more than a little surprised. 

Archie Andrews had given up; on life, on a future, and on himself. Injured while serving overseas, his ability to walk had been ripped away and his mind had suffered damage far worse. 

He hadn’t spoken to her right away, looking blankly away from her every time she tried to make conversation - but Betty Cooper never stepped down from a challenge, and after three weeks she had not only finally received a response from him, but a small smile as well to a joke regarding what they had served for lunch.

The months that followed had them forming a friendship that surprised the both of them and ultimately led her to where she was now, eyes weary from a non-stop eighteen-hour drive that led her six states away to the middle of nowhere.

She had first learned about Jughead Jones a couple of months after meeting Archie when the subject regarding why he had decided to join the military had come up. 

_“I was running away.”_

_“Running away from what?”_

_“Guilt.”_

It was after that that she had learned of Hiram Lodge, a man who had wreaked terror on the small town Archie had grown up in and of Jughead, his best friend, the greatest person he’d ever known, who vowed along with Archie to bring an end to Hiram’s tyrannical reign their senior year of high school. 

She’d listened, her feelings bouncing back and forth from shock to sympathy, to anger and horror as he told her about their plan and how his own personal hatred for the man had it all going so terribly wrong, landing him and Jughead both in handcuffs.

_“He admitted to it before I could even get a chance to tell them it wasn’t him. That it was me.”_

The tears that formed in his eyes then had her own appearing. A man who had been emotionless when she’d first met him now looking lost and wounded in front of her. 

_“They didn’t even think twice about it. He was from the wrong side of town with an absentee father while my dad was well known and respected. It was easier to place it all on Jug without too much of an outrage. But it was my fault. It was all_ my _fault.”_

He’d told her how the jury had practically known their verdict before even leaving the room to deliberate, deciding to throw the book at Jughead at just eighteen years old and making sure the next decade of his life would be spent behind bars for a crime there was no proof he even committed. 

_“I promised him I would make it up to him. That I would be there the day they let him out. That I would be there for him always. Now I can barely get out of bed in the morning let alone drive there. He has no one. I let him down again.”_

Those shaky words from a broken man she now called her friend were how she found herself standing in front of a high-security prison in Upstate Michigan, waiting for the man Archie had spoken to her about every day for the past eight months to exit the gates.

She still wasn’t sure why she agreed to do it. Driving states away to pick up a convicted felon whom she’d never met just because a man she’d known less than a year asked her to was definitely high on the list of things she never thought she’d be doing. 

But she couldn’t say no.

She felt as though she knew him herself, and just like Archie, she didn’t want him taking his first steps of freedom back into a world with no one waiting for him and nowhere to go. 

When the giant doors started to slide open, her heart began to race and she squeezed her eyes shut as she heard steps on the concrete before opening them, her gaze immediately landing on the man approaching her. 

She had seen several pictures of him and Archie as teenagers, and she was half expecting him to look the same somehow - like the innocent boy draped in flannel and sherpa with the soft eyes and hesitant smile. 

Instead, she found eyes dark with hidden emotion, a body that was hard, solid, littered in tattoos, and a face that could never be described as innocent. 

When he stopped before her, a white tank stretched over his chest, jeans that were far too big for his frame, and a leather jacket draped over his arm, she tried desperately to slow her breathing as she stepped forward and held out a hand. 

His eyes shot to her offered palm before finding her own again, but he didn’t move to take it - confusion and wariness swirling in his blue irises.

“My name’s Betty Cooper,” she told him, then cleared her throat at the hoarseness of her voice. “Archie sent me.”

His eyes changed then and for a moment, she saw a flash of that innocence, that softness she had seen in pictures before it was gone again. 

He nodded slowly, his eyes moving over her face, but still - he didn’t say a word. 

Nervous and desperate for something to ease the tension, she turned and reached into her car, pulling out the old worn beanie Archie had given her and turned to hold it out to him. “He said you would be wanting this.”

Jughead froze, and for a moment she nearly regretted bringing it up so soon - but she had panicked at the silence. She moved to put it back in the car just as he reached out, slowly, as if afraid it would disappear from her hands if he got too close, and his large hands, nearly twice the size of her own, took hold of it, gripping it tight. 

Hands now free, Betty nervously shoved them in her pockets, then immediately took them out to run over her smoothed back hair. 

“Why did he send you?”

Her stomach clenched, his question confirming Archie’s story that he had no idea the condition his best friend was in. 

“He was unable to come,” she told him, watching his reaction closely. “So I’m here to bring you home.”

At the word home, his eyes flashed again, and she realized that although he and Archie had been forced down two very different paths, that he had seen just as many horrors as his friend had. Maybe even more.

“Okay,” he replied slowly, his voice rough as his eyes flickered to her car before meeting green again. “Thank you.”

Betty smiled then, relieved. “Don’t thank me yet, I’m a slow cautious driver in areas I’m not familiar with.”

His lips quirked, but just barely. So quick that if she’d blinked she would have missed it. “That’s okay. I got nothing but time.”

She gave him a reassuring smile before walking around the car and taking the driver's seat, her body prickling with awareness as he slid in beside her, too tall for her small car, the space forcing him to sit so close. 

She waited until his seatbelt was on before starting the car, knuckles gripping the wheel. 

“Want to get something to eat?”

She was surprised he didn’t get whiplash from how fast his head twisted to hers. “I have no money.”

“I’ll buy if you promise to help with the driving. I’m exhausted.”

Jughead searched her face, looking surprised by her generosity before he nodded. “Burgers?”

She winked. “You read my mind.” 

He smiled then, and the expression completely disarmed her, her jaw going slack as she stared, unable to turn away. His smile was beautiful, yet stretched his face in a way that seemed foreign and made her wonder just how long it had been since anything forced his lips to tug up. 

Realizing she was staring, she quickly looked away and started the car, pulling out onto the deserted country road and towards the small diner she’d passed on her way there.

A throat clearing a few miles down the road had her turning to him and her eyes caught the tattered beanie on his lap, still gripped tight in his hands. 

“I’m Jughead, by the way. Though I guess you already know that.”

She smiled over at him as they stopped at a light. “I do. It’s nice to meet you, Jughead Jones.”

His eyes moved over her face before he nodded gently. “You as well, Betty.”

She smiled once more before turning her eyes back to the road, trying desperately to ignore just how much she liked the way her name fell from his lips. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> This is one of my most favorite things I've ever written and I'm really excited to share the rest :) 
> 
> Find me on tumblr @secretsofthesky


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